Mobile devices such as smart phones, tablet computers, and gaming controllers increasingly include capabilities for recognizing accelerometer-based gestures. An electronic device held by or mounted upon the user (or a body portion thereof) senses movements of the body that can be detected by the electronic device and recognized as a gesture. Gesture recognition in electronic devices is becoming of increasing importance insofar as gestures (and recognition of gestures) can provide a natural, immediate, intuitive manner of inputting commands or signals to an electronic device that can serve to initiate, activate, or trigger functionality of the electronic device or otherwise have an influence on the electronic device.
Notwithstanding the value and increasing importance of gesture recognition in relation to a wide variety of electronic devices, it remains difficult in many contexts for electronic devices to recognize that gestures have occurred or to recognize exactly what gestures have occurred even if some gesture-like behavior has been detected. First, gestures can be difficult to recognize because, even though a given type of gesture involves characteristic movements, any given performance of the gesture will typically vary from other performances of the gesture. Thus, successful gesture recognition requires that the recognition mechanism not only be capable of distinguishing intended gesture movements from other movements, but also be tolerant of variations in the movement associated with different instances of that given type of gesture so that those different instances can all be recognized as gestures of that given type.
Further, in embodiments where gestures are to be sensed as movements by way of accelerometers or gyroscope signals, the proper recognition of gestures can be impeded by imperfect or inaccurate operation of the accelerometers (or other sensors, such as gyroscopes), or to the extent that the signals from such sensing devices include significant noise levels. Thus, there are opportunities to improve accelerometer-based gesture recognition within electronic devices.